Shakespeare's Montaigne by Michel de Montaigne
Quæ non audierit mistus vagitibus ægris
Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.
No night ensued day light: no morning followed night,
Which heard not moaning mixed with sick-men’s groaning.
With deaths and funerals joined was that moaning. [83]
To what end recoil you from it, if you cannot go back? You have seen many who have found good in death, ending thereby many many miseries. But have you seen any that hath received hurt thereby? Therefore it is mere simplicity to condemn a thing you never approve, neither by yourself nor any other. Why dost thou complain of me and of destiny? Although thy age be not come to her period, thy life is. A little man is a whole man, as well as a great man. Neither men nor their lives are measured by the Ell. [84]
Chiron refused immortality, being informed of the conditions thereof, even by the God of time and of continuance, Saturn his father. Imagine truly how much an ever-during life would be less tolerable and more painful to a man than is the life which I have given him. Had you not death, you would then incessantly curse and cry out against me that I had deprived you of it. I have of purpose and unwittingly blended some bitterness amongst it, that so seeing the commodity of its use, I might hinder you from over greedily embracing or indiscreetly calling for it. To continue in this moderation, that is neither to fly from life nor to run to death (which I require of you), I have tempered both the one and other between sweetness and sourness.
I first taught Thales, the chiefest of your sages and wise men, that to live and die were indifferent, which made him answer one very wisely who asked him wherefore he died not: Because, sayeth he, it is indifferent. The water, the earth, the air, the fire, and other members of this my universe are no more the instruments of thy life than of thy death. Why fearest thou thy last day? He [85] is no more guilty and conferreth no more to thy death than any of the others. It is not the last step that causeth weariness; it only declares it. All days march towards death; only the last comes to it.
Behold here the good precepts of our universal mother Nature. [86] I have oftentimes bethought myself whence it proceedeth that, in times of war, the visage of death (whether we see it in us or in others) seemeth without all comparison much less dreadful and terrible unto us than in our houses or in our beds. Otherwise, it should be an army of physicians and whiners. And she [87] ever being one, there must needs be much more assurance amongst country people and of base condition than in others. I verily believe these fearful looks and astonishing countenances wherewith we encompass it are those that more amaze and terrify us than death. A new form of life: the outcries of mothers; the wailing of women and children; the visitation of dismayed and swooning friends; the assistance of a number of pale-looking, distracted, and whining servants; a dark chamber, tapers burning round about; our couch beset round with physicians and preachers; and to conclude, nothing but horror and astonishment on every side of us. Are we not already dead and buried? The very children are afraid of their friends when they see them masked; and so are we. The mask must as well be taken from things, as from men, which being removed, we shall find nothing hid under it but the very same death that a seely [88] varlet or a simple maid-servant did lately suffer without amazement or fear. Happy is that death which takes all leisure from the preparations of such an equipage. [89]
It Is Folly to Refer Truth or Falsehood to Our Sufficiency
1.27, 1.26
IT IS NOT peradventure without reason that we ascribe the facility of believing and easiness of persuasion unto simplicity and ignorance. For me seemeth to have learnt heretofore that belief was, as it were, an impression conceived in our mind, and according as the same was found either more soft or of less resistance, it was easier to imprint anything therein. Ut necesse est lancem in libra ponderibus impositis deprimi: sic animum perspicuis cedere. As it is necessary a scale must go down in the balance when weights are put into it, so must a mind yield to things that are manifest. [1] Forasmuch, therefore, as the mind being most empty and without counterpoise, so much the more easily doth it yield under the burden of the first persuasion. And that’s the reason why children, those of the common sort, women, and sick-folks are so subject to be misled and so easy to swallow gudgeons. [2]
Yet on the other side it is a sottish [3] presumption to disdain and condemn that for false which unto us seemeth to bear no show of likelihood or truth; which is an ordinary fault in those who persuade themselves to be of more sufficiency than the vulgar sort. So was I sometimes wont to do; and if I heard anybody speak either of ghosts walking, of foretelling future things, of enchantments, of witchcrafts, or any other thing reported which I could not well conceive or that was beyond my reach,
Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentáque Thessala:
Dreams, magic terrors, witches, uncouth-wonders,
Night-walking spirits, Thessalian conjur’d-thunders. [4]
I could not but feel a kind of compassion to see the poor and seely [5] people abused with such follies. And now I perceive that I was as much to be moaned myself. Not that experience hath since made me to discern anything beyond my former opinions; and yet was not my curiosity the cause of it. [6] But reason hath taught me that so resolutely to condemn a thing for false and impossible is to assume unto himself the advantage to have the bounds and limits of God’s will and of the power of our common mother Nature tied to his sleeve. And that there is no greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacity and bounds of our sufficiency.
If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, how many such do daily present themselves unto our sight? Let us consider through what clouds and how blindfold[ed] we are led to the knowledge of most things that pass our hands. Verily, we shall find it is rather custom than science [7] that removeth the strangeness of them from us:
——iam nemo fessus saturúsque videndi,
Suspicere in cœli dignatur lucida templa.
Now no man tir’d with glut of contemplation
Deigns to have heav’ns bright church in admiration.
And that those things, were they newly presented unto us, we should doubtless deem them as much, or more, unlikely and incredible than any other.
——si nunc primum mortalibus adsint
Ex improviso, ceu sint obiecta repentè,
Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici,
Aut minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes.
If now first on a sudden they were here
’Mongst mortal men, object to eye or ear,
Nothing, than these things, would more wondrous be,
Or that, men durst less think, ever to see. [8]
He who had never seen a river before, the first he saw he thought it to be the Ocean. And things that are the greatest in our knowledge we judge them to be the extremest that nature worketh in that kind.
Scilicet et fluvius qui non est maximum, ei est
Qui non ante aliquem maiorem vidit, et ingens
Arbor homoque videtur, et omnia de genere omni
Maxima quæ vidit quisque, hæc ingentia fingit.
A stream none of the greatest, may so seem
To him that never saw a greater stream.
Trees, men seem huge, and all things of all sorts,
The greatest one hath seen, he huge reports. [9]
Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur, neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper vident. Minds are acquainted by custom of their eyes, nor do they admire or inquire the reason of those things which they continually behold. [10]
The novelty of things doth more incite us to search out the causes than their greatness. We must judge of this infinite power of nature with more reverence and with more acknowledgement of our own ignorance and weakness. How many things of small likelihood are there, witnessed by men, worthy of credit, whereof if we cannot be persuaded, we should at least leave them in suspense? [
When we find in Froysard [13] that the Earl of Foix (being in Bearne) had knowledge of the defeature at Iuberoth of King John of Castile the morrow next it happened, and the means he allegeth for it, a man may well laugh at it. And of that which our annals report that Pope Honorius, the very same day that King Philip Augustus died at Mantes, caused his public funeral to be solemnized and commanded them [14] to be celebrated throughout all Italy. For the authority of the witnesses hath peradventure no sufficient warrant to restrain us. But what if Plutarch, besides diverse examples which he allegeth of antiquity, sayeth to have certainly known that in Domitian’s time the news of the battle, lost by Antonius in Germany many days’ journeys thence, was published at Rome and divulged through the world the very same day it succeeded. And if Cæsar holds that it hath many times happened that report hath foregone the accident—shall we not say that those simple people have suffered themselves to be cousoned [15] and seduced by the vulgar sort because they were not as clear-sighted as we? Is there anything more dainty, more unspotted, and more lively than Pliny’s judgment, whensoever it pleaseth him to make show of it? Is there any farther from vanity? I omit the excellency of his learning and knowledge, whereof I make but small reckoning, in which of those two parts do we exceed him? Yet there is no scholar so meanly learned but will convince him of lying and read a lecture of contradiction against him upon the progress of nature’s works.
When we read in Bouchet the miracles wrought by the relics of Saint Hilary, his credit is not sufficient to bar us the liberty of contradicting him. [16] Yet at random to condemn all such-like histories seemeth to me a notable impudence. That famous man Saint Augustine witnesseth to have seen a blind child to recover his sight over the relics of Saint Gervase and Protaise at Milan; and a woman at Carthage to have been cured of a canker [17] by the sign of the holy cross, which a woman newly baptized made upon her; and Hesperius a familiar friend of his, to have expelled certain spirits that molested his house with a little of the earth of our Savior’s sepulcher, which earth being afterward transported into a church, a paralytic man was immediately therewith cured; and a woman going in procession, having as she passed by with a nosegay touched the case wherein Saint Steven’s bones were, and with the same afterward rubbed her eyes, she recovered her sight, which long before she had utterly lost; and diverse other examples, where he affirmeth to have been an assistant [18] himself. [19] What shall we accuse him of, and two other holy Bishops, Aurelius and Maximinus, whom he calleth for his witnesses? Shall it be of ignorance, of simplicity, of malice, of facility, or of imposture? Is any living man so impudent that thinks he may be compared to them, whether it be in virtue or piety, in knowledge or judgment, in wisdom or sufficiency? Qui ut rationem nullam afferrent, ipsa autoritate me frangerent: Who though they alleged no reason, yet might subdue me with their very authority. [20]
It is a dangerous fond-hardiness and of consequence, besides the absurd temerity it draws with it, to despise what we conceive not. For after that, according to your best understanding, you have established the limits of truth and bounds of falsehood, and that it is found you must necessarily believe things wherein is more strangeness than in those you deny, you have already bound yourself to abandon them. Now that which methinks brings as much disorder in our consciences, namely in these troubles of religion [21] wherein we are, is the dispensation Catholics make of their belief. They suppose to show themselves very moderate and skillful when they yield their adversaries any of those articles now in question. But besides that, they perceive not what an advantage it is for him that chargeth you, if you but once begin to yield and give him ground, and how much that encourageth him to pursue his point, those articles which they choose for the lightest are oftentimes most important. Either a man must wholly submit himself to the authority of our ecclesiastical policy, or altogether dispense himself from it. It is not for us to determine what part of obedience we owe unto it.
And moreover, I may say it because I have made trial of it, having sometimes used this liberty of my choice and particular election, not regarding certain points of the observance of our Church, which seem to bear a face either more vain or more strange. Coming to communicate them with wise men, I have found that those things have a most solid and steady foundation and that it is but foolishness and ignorance makes us receive them with less respect and reverence than the rest. Why remember we not what, and how many, contradictions we find and feel even in our own judgment? How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which to day we deem but fables? Glory and curiosity are the scourges of our souls. The latter induceth us to have an oar in every ship, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved or undecided.
Of Friendship
1.28, 1.27
CONSIDERING the proceeding of a painter’s work I have, [1] a desire hath possessed me to imitate him. He maketh choice of the most convenient place and middle of every wall there to place a picture, laboured with all his skill and sufficiency, and all void places about it he filleth up with antique Boscage [2] or Crotesko [3] works, which are fantastical pictures, having no grace but in the variety and strangeness of them. And what are these my compositions in truth other than antique works and monstrous bodies, patched and huddled up together of diverse members without any certain or well-ordered figure, having neither order, dependency, or proportion, but casual and framed by chance?
Definit in piscem mulier formosa superne.
A woman fair for parts superior,
Ends in a fish for parts inferior. [4]
Touching this second point I go as far as my painter, but for the other and better part I am far behind; for my sufficiency reacheth not so far as that I dare undertake a rich, a polished, and, according to true skill, an art-like table. [5] I have advised myself to borrow one of Steven de la Boitie, [6] who with this kind of work shall honour all the world. It is a discourse he entitled Voluntary Servitude, but those who have not known him have since very properly baptized the same, The Against One. In his first youth he writ, by way of essay, in honour of liberty against tyrants. It hath long since been dispersed amongst men of understanding, not without great and well-deserved commendations; for it is full of wit and containeth as much learning as may be. Yet doth it differ much from the best he can do. And if in the age I knew him in, he would have undergone my design to set his fantasies down in writing, we should doubtless see many rare things and which would very nearly approach the honour of antiquity; for especially touching that part of Nature’s gifts, I know none may be compared to him. But it was not long of him [7] that ever this treatise came to man’s view, and I believe he never saw it since it first escaped his hands; with certain other notes concerning the Edict of January, [8] famous by reason of our intestine war, [9] which haply in other places find their deserved praise. It is all I could ever recover of his relics (whom when death seized, he by his last will and testament, left with so kind remembrance, heir and executor of his library and writings), besides the little book I since caused to be published. [10]
To which his pamphlet I am particularly most bounden, for so much as it was the instrumental mean of our first acquaintance. For it was showed me long time before I saw him, and gave me the first knowledge of his name, addressing and thus nourishing that unspotted friendship which we (so long as it has pleased God) have so sincerely, so entire and inviolably maintained between us, that truly a man shall not commonly hear of the like, and amongst our modern men no sign of any such is seen. So many parts are required to the erecting of such a one that it may be counted a wonder if fortune once in three ages contract the lik
There is nothing to which Nature hath more addressed us than to society. And Aristotle sayeth that perfect law-givers have had more regardful care of friendship than of justice. [11] And the utmost drift of its perfection is this. For generally, all those amities [12] nourished by voluptuousness or profit, public or private need, are thereby so much the less fair and so much the less true amities, in that they intermeddle other causes, scope, and fruit with friendship than itself alone. Nor doe those four ancient kinds of friendships—natural, social, hospitable, and venerian [13]—either particularly or conjointly beseem the same.
That from children to parents may rather be termed respect. Friendship is nourished by communication, which by reason of the over-great disparity cannot be found in them and would happly [14] offend the duties of nature. For neither all the secret thoughts of parents can be communicated unto children, lest it might engender an unbeseeming [15] familiarity between them, nor the admonitions and corrections (which are the chiefest offices of friendship) could be exercised from children to parents. There have nations been found where, by custom, children killed their parents, and others where parents slew their children, thereby to avoid the hindrance of enterbearing [16] one another in after times; for naturally one dependeth from the ruin of another. There have philosophers been found disdaining this natural conjunction: witness Aristippus who, being urged with the affection he ought his children as proceeding from his loins, began to spit, saying, That also that excrement proceeded from him, and that also we engendered worms and lice. [17] And that other man, whom Plutarch would have persuaded to agree with his brother, answered, I care not a straw the more for him, though he came out of the same womb I did. [18]
Verily, the name of brother is a glorious name and full of loving kindness, and therefore did he and I term one another sworn brother. But this commixture, dividence, [19] and sharing of goods, this joining wealth to wealth, and that the riches of one shall be the poverty of another, doth exceedingly distemper and distract all brotherly alliance and lovely conjunction. If brothers should conduct the progress of their advancement and thrift in one same path and course, they must necessarily oftentimes hinder and cross one another. Moreover, the correspondency and relation that begetteth these true and mutually perfect amities, why shall it be found in these? The father and the son may very well be of a far-differing complexion, and so may brothers. He is my son, he is my kinsman, but he may be fool, a bad, or a peevish-minded man. And then according as they are friendships which the law and duty of nature doth command us, so much the less of our own voluntary choice and liberty is there required unto it. And our genuine liberty hath no production more properly her own than that of affection and amity. Sure I am that concerning the same I have assayed all that might be, having had the best and most indulgent father that ever was, even to his extremest age, and who from father to son was descended of famous house and touching this rare-seen virtue of brotherly concord very exemplary: